Single Coalition Wins All Seats in Tehran City Council

TEHRAN (Tasnim) – The final results of the 5th City and Village Councils elections in Iran indicate that the candidates in a list known as reformists have gained the whole 21 seats in Tehran’s City Council.

Based on the final results of voting count in Tehran, obtained from around 4,000 ballot boxes in the capital, all candidates of the 21-memebr list have won the City Council seats by a wide margin.

The 5th City and Village Councils elections across Iran were held simultaneously with the presidential election on Friday.

The highest number of votes in Tehran have gone to Mohsen Hashemi Rafsanjani, the son of Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former Iranian president and chairman of the country’s Expediency Council who died in January.

The top figure of the list has garnered 1,746,568 votes.

The figures also indicate that the second and third places have gone to Morteza Alviri and Ahmad Masjed-Jame’ee, each of whom have won around 1.4 million votes.

Alviri is a former mayor of Tehran and used to serve as Iran’s ambassador to Spain too.

Masjed-Jame’ee, who currently holds a seat in Tehran City Council, was the minister of culture in Mohammad Khatami’s cabinet.

Other independent or principlist candidates are trailing behind the 21-memebr list.

According to the results, Mahdi Chamran, the incumbent chair of Tehran’s City Council is taking the 22nd place, more than 406,000 votes short of winning a seat in the council for four more years.

According to Article 7 of the Iranian Constitution, the local councils, together with the parliament, are “decision-making and administrative organs of the State”.